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Conservative News and Political Commentary For Your Personal and Financial FreedomTue, 31 Mar 2015 15:54:34 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Christians are targets in the culture warshttp://personalliberty.com/christians-targets-culture-wars/
http://personalliberty.com/christians-targets-culture-wars/#commentsTue, 31 Mar 2015 05:01:56 +0000http://personalliberty.com/?p=278499Last Thursday, Indiana became the latest state to pass legislation protecting the right of Christians to exercise their faith. And the left has gone absolutely bonkers because of it.

]]>Last Thursday, Indiana became the latest state to pass legislation protecting the right of Christians to exercise their faith — by declining to participate in gay weddings, for example. And the left has gone absolutely bonkers because of it.

Hundreds of protesters rallied in Indianapolis, the state capital, demanding that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act be repealed. They contend that the law will somehow open the floodgates to massive discrimination against gays. Many demanded that Gov. Mike Pence, who supported the bill and signed it into law, be removed from office. Social media has joined the fight under the hashtag, #BoycottIndiana.

Hillary Clinton was quick to jump on the bandwagon opposing the bill, tweeting:

Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn’t discriminate against ppl bc of who they love #LGBThttp://t.co/mDhpS18oEH

Get that? The woman whom many Democrats want to crown as our next president said it is “sad” that the legislators in a state would approve such a law. She conveniently ignores the fact that the original Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed overwhelmingly in Congress in 1993 — and signed into law by her husband, Bill Clinton.

At the time he signed the legislation, Bill Clinton said:

We are a people of faith. We have been so secure in that faith that we have enshrined in our Constitution protection for people who profess no faith. And good for us for doing so. That is what the First Amendment is all about. [No, it’s about a lot more than that, Bill. But we’ll save that argument for another day.]

But let us never believe that the freedom of religion imposes on any of us some responsibility to run from our convictions. Let us instead respect one another’s faiths, fight to the death to preserve the right of every American to practice whatever convictions he or she has, but bring our values back to the table of American discourse to heal our troubled land.

But gay activists won’t permit a Christian “to practice whatever convictions he or she has” if a Christian believes the Bible teaches that a wedding should be between a man and a woman and declines to participate in a same-sex marriage. Such homosexual zealots believe it is perfectly OK — in fact, it is their duty — to force such Christians to go against their convictions.

The 1993 act put limits on such actions by the federal government. But then gays won lawsuits in state courts against a baker who refused to prepare a wedding cake for a gay marriage and a photographer who cited her Christian belief as the reason for declining to participate in a same-sex wedding. As a result, several states passed state versions of a Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Last Thursday, Indiana became the 21st state to do so (Alabama’s state version is an amendment to its state constitution).

So now the left is throwing a hissy fit. And politically correct companies and institutions are expressing their concern. Even the NCAA, which is hosting the Final Four college basketball championships in Indianapolis next week, says it may move future events to another state. Oh, dear.

Let’s be clear about one thing: This debate isn’t over the legality of same-sex marriage. Those are now legal in most states, and I suspect it won’t be long before the Supreme Court makes them legal in all 50 states.

Nor is it really about discrimination against gay people. There are already plenty of laws and court rulings that prohibit discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered individuals.

No, the question isn’t whether gays can get married. It’s whether men and women of faith can be forced to participate in their weddings, even if it violates their faith. It’s clear where the left stands on this issue. Once again, it is demonstrating its willingness — nay, its eagerness — to use the power of that state to force us to comply with its dictates.

Obey or else. It’s the same, old dictatorial message we’ve heard so many times before. Congratulations to the Hoosier State for taking a stand in favor of freedom instead of coercion.

]]>http://personalliberty.com/christians-targets-culture-wars/feed/0Next year’s flu vaccine already expected to be as ineffective as this year’shttp://personalliberty.com/next-years-flu-vaccine-already-expected-to-be-as-ineffective-as-this-years/
http://personalliberty.com/next-years-flu-vaccine-already-expected-to-be-as-ineffective-as-this-years/#commentsTue, 31 Mar 2015 05:01:11 +0000http://personalliberty.com/?p=278506We’re already being warned that next year’s flu vaccine may be as ineffective as this year’s. In other words, it will hardly be effective at all.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention constantly chides people to get their flu vaccine. Doctors and pharmacies get kickbacks to peddle the shot.

The CDC tells us that every year an estimated 5 percent to 20 percent of Americans come down with the flu, leading to 200,000 hospitalizations. That percentage range is a huge discrepancy. Five percent of 310 million is 15.5 million, whereas 20 percent is 62 million.

Although the CDC is unable to tell us definitively within 45 million people how many Americans annually contract the flu, it can tell us how many are hospitalized for it each year. But according to the CDC, whether 15 million people or 62 million people catch the flu, it’s always about 200,000 who are hospitalized. Odd.

Also odd, there are more than 200,000 iatrogenic deaths each year. That’s more than are hospitalized by the flu. These are deaths caused by medical errors, unnecessary surgeries, infections and adverse reactions to prescribed drugs. Unfortunately, there’s no vaccine for that, nor is the medical-industrial complex seeking one.

The CDC can also tell us that annual deaths from the flu range from 3,000 to 49,000. That would seem on the surface to make sense. You have a broad range contracting the disease and you have a broad range dying from it year to year. But what you aren’t told is that those numbers are guesses, pulled from thin air.

According to a report by researcher Peter Doshi, Ph.D., published in the British Medical Journal in 2013, of the hundreds of thousands of respiratory samples taken each year from patients diagnosed with the flu in the United States and tested in labs, only 16 percent test positive for the influenza virus. It turns out that most flu cases are actually caused by bacteria or fungus or any of a number of other things except the influenza virus being blamed.

Doshi wrote:

But perhaps the cleverest aspect of the influenza marketing strategy surrounds the claim that “flu” and “influenza” are the same. The distinction seems subtle, and purely semantic. But general lack of awareness of the difference might be the primary reason few people realize that even the ideal influenza vaccine, matched perfectly to circulating strains of wild influenza and capable of stopping all influenza viruses, can only deal with a small part of the “flu” problem because most “flu” appears to have nothing to do with influenza. Every year, hundreds of thousands of respiratory specimens are tested across the US. Of those tested, on average 16% are found to be influenza positive.

In a good year, according to the CDC’s own estimates, the flu vaccine prevents flu about 70 percent of the time. But this flu season, the flu vaccine makers missed the mark. The vaccine has not been effective for the most common stain of flu — H3N2 — that circulated in the U.S. The CDC claims it has been about 33 percent effect, or about half as effective as usual. But that’s quite different from the number reported by Public Health England, which claimed 3 percent to 4 percent effectiveness.

The CDC’s numbers are grossly exaggerated. The truth is flu vaccines are essentially worthless at preventing the flu and are shown to have harmful side effects. According a report by The Cochrane Library, 10 people have to be vaccinated to prevent one case of the flu. According to a report published in The Lancet, flu vaccines prevent the flu in only 1.5 percent of cases.

And then there’s this: According to a report published in the British Medical Journal in 2005, actual annual flu deaths are measured in the dozens, not the tens of thousands as reported by the CDC. When researcher Doshi studied actual flu deaths, he learned, “'[I] nfluenza and pneumonia’ took 62,034 lives in 2001 — 61,777 of which were attributable to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was the flu virus positively identified.” In other words, the influenza virus was actually present in only 18 of 62,034 deaths attributed to both influenza and pneumonia.

We’re already being warned that next year’s flu vaccine may be as ineffective as this year’s. In other words, it will hardly be effective at all. That’s because its manufacture began in late February. And, once again, researchers are taking a wild guess as to what strain will appear next fall.

The Guardian reported last month: “This time last year, (Dr. John) McCauley and colleagues at (World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Reference and Research on Influenza) were mulling over what to include in this winter’s flu vaccine. ‘We didn’t even know at the time we were recommending that this virus (H3N2) had started to appear out there.’”

Bottom line: Don’t buy the lie. The flu vaccine is ineffective at preventing the flu and can be quite harmful. Flu vaccines contain aluminum and mercury — both toxins, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The amount of mercury found in the GlaxoSmithKline Flulaval vaccine was 51 parts per million, more than 25,000 times the contaminant level established by the EPA.

Vitamin D3 and other natural supplements to help you reach peak immunity are much more effective and don’t cause toxic poisoning, Guillain-Barre syndrome and other afflictions.

]]>On Palm Sunday, a restaurant worker confronts shouting protesters who entered an Atlanta-area restaurant and shouted at diners as part of #BlackBrunchATL.

I don’t live in Atlanta. It’s not that I bear the “City too busy to hate” any personal animus. I even lived there for a stretch, in a tiny place in Midtown. Its limited benefits included a rooftop deck from which one could reach Piedmont Park with a 5-iron, presuming one was so inclined.

But Atlanta has become one of those cities with a subpopulation of self-important, “socially conscious” types. They all have the same three-step M.O.:

They gentrify the hell out of an urban area surrounded by gut-wrenchingly poor, minority-dominated neighborhoods.

Then they talk with their eyes closed about the plight of the people in the gut-wrenchingly poor, minority-dominated neighborhoods.

And they desperately hope none of the people from the gut-wrenchingly poor, minority-dominated neighborhoods actually come to visit.

Essentially, Atlanta has become the East Coast’s answer to San Francisco, or, more accurately, the Southeast’s answer to Brooklyn.

Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t resist the urge to smile just a bit Sunday afternoon as I watched news footage of the latest left-wing temper tantrum disguised as “activism” streaming in from the Peach State capital. Since their first engagement was such a rousing success, the “Black Brunch Atlanta” mobs swarmed the cafes of the Greater Atlanta area again Sunday. Following in the footsteps of those great social ground shakers as the self-proclaimed “Occupiers” and the original disrupters-of-midday-meals, “Black Brunch NYC,” the Black Brunch Atlanta mobs took to the streets to vent their frustrations over mistreatment at the hands of evil white racists by forcing those evil white racists to closely examine their own inherent white racism while listening to righteously indignant recitations of crimes against black people, such as the murder of angelic, innocent Michael Brown by evil white racist Darren Wilson of the evil white racist Ferguson, Missouri, Police Department.

Well, that’s sortof what happened. To be sure, there were swarms of angry mobs. But they didn’t exactly take to the streets. Once again, they invaded private property with the sole intent of harassing guests therein. Unless I missed a memo, that’s not “protesting.” That’s “criminal trespass.” And throw in a couple of the unsubtle remarks I picked up from some of the voices in the din — my favorite being, “Why is #BlackBrunchATL so disturbing to white people? They’re lucky blacks are just interrupting their brunch and not killing them” — and Black Brunch Atlanta graduates to “terroristic threats.”

They were easy to spot, too. All I had to do was look for the people not wearing heavy-framed glasses, ironic T-shirts and jeans cut for 9-year-olds. I noticed many of the pro-Black Brunch Atlanta types on Twitter gloating about intimidating the diners. I also noticed no one seemed to have the heart to tell them that the urban hipster subspecies can be intimidated by my Labrador retriever. For that matter, screaming at the top of your lungs about perceived bigotry in a place that takes pride in free-range, farm-to-table, organically grown anything is as worthwhile an endeavor as passing out Black Panther flyers in Nancy Pelosi’s ritzy San Francisco neighborhood. Sure, most of them are “down for the struggle,” right up until the moment “the struggle” crosses the bridge from Oakland and interrupts their soy lattes.

Frustrations were indeed vented. Only, the frustrations that were being vented were largely imaginary. One of the uncomfortable realities from which our Black Brunch pals seem intent on hiding is this: From a statistical standpoint, the greatest physical threat to black people is other black people. To put it another — and probably equally uncomfortable, but no less true — way: From a statistical standpoint, a black male between the ages of 16 and 49 is safer in the whitest neighborhood in America than in virtually any majority-minority neighborhood from Bedford-Stuyvesant to Compton.

To further belabor the uncomfortable truth, the worst examples of gut-wrenching poverty, whether they be the Atlanta neighborhoods that don’t have a Williams-Sonoma or the spots in Oakland from which Pelosi’s house isn’t even visible, all share things for which even the most socially conscious hipster in the whole coffee house can’t be blamed:

Stunning rates of black-on-black crime,

Stunning rates of fatherless households,

And deeply entrenched Democratic Party political control.

And to stick a pin in their other “frustrations,” even President Barack Obama’s own Igor, Eric Holder, has acknowledged that Brown was a thug who committed suicide-by-cop by forcing Wilson to fight for his life. “Hands up; don’t shoot” is as legitimate a narrative as “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

And white people were forced to examine stuff. Video from one of the eateries invaded by the Black Brunch Atlanta folks showed white people, along with black people, Asian people, Hispanic people, Indian people and probably a few Muslim people, examining their menus, their cellphones, their bills, the exits and their decision to start eating Sunday brunch at home. Other white people, along with black people, Asian people, Hispanic people, Indian people and probably a few Muslim people who work themselves to the bone keeping up with packed houses full of demanding yuppie customers, get to wonder if they’ll soon be examining pink slips while other people of all colors examine whether they can stave off bankruptcy if the Black Brunch Atlanta mob targets their restaurant again.

I noticed Black Brunch Atlanta and their fellow racist “slacktivists” never show up at truck stops or the roadside diners, only in the mid-to-upscale eateries with parking lots filled with Priuses. The left is fond of claiming that white conservative men are the cause of so many of their perceived troubles. If they were serious about confronting their tormentors, they wouldn’t storm upscale Atlanta eateries; they’d storm the Cracker Barrel. They’re not only blaming the wrong people; they’re doing it in the wrong place. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of looking for your car keys a block away from where you lost them because the light is better there.

I’m sure Black Brunch Atlanta, just like its ideological siblings in the “Occupy” movement, will return. More “racism” will need decrying. More “oppression” will need exposing. And more meals will need ruining. In the meantime, I’ll just be over here, enjoying the “white privilege” of dining in relative peace and quiet. The Black Brunchers should try it. I’d invite them to join me, but they would refuse. I’m white and conservative, and they are the ones with their eyes and ears shut to the world. They are blind to any other view or opinion. Better they stick with the hipsters.

]]>Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has introduced legislation that gives a nod to President Barack Obama’s call last year for police officers throughout the nation to be equipped with body cameras to hold officers accountable.

Paul, along with Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, recently unveiled the Police Creating Accountability by Making Effective Recording Available (Police CAMERA) Act of 2015 to create a pilot grant program to help state and local law enforcement purchase the cameras.

“Body cameras will benefit the brave men and women who serve in our police force and the people they protect,” Paul said in a statement. “The use of body cameras helps officers collect and preserve evidence to solve crimes, while also decreasing the number of complaints against police.”

According to Paul’s office, the grant program would be subject to review in two years to “assess the impact body-worn cameras have on reducing the use of excessive force by police, its effects on officer safety and public safety, and procedures to protect the privacy of individuals who are recorded.”

At the height of public outrage over civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. police officers, Obama announced $263 million in funding to improve law enforcement resources, training and accountability. The president’s spending package included $75 million to help pay for the purchases of body-mounted cameras for officers throughout the nation and required state and local governments to shoulder some of the cost of equipping officers with as many as 50,000 body cams.

A recent study showed that body camera use by officers at one department resulted in a 59 percent reduction in officer use of force and an 87 percent drop in the number of complaints against officers from the previous year.

]]>The nation’s Republican leaders have likened former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to disgraced President Richard Nixon as her private email scandal continues to unfold. Of course, Nixon’s clumsy secretary erased only a few minutes of the former president’s White House recordings. Clinton is missing nearly 30,000 email records.

House select committee investigating the 2012 terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, subpoenaed Clinton’s private email server earlier this month in an effort to determine whether the former secretary of state used liberties when determining which emails were “official.”

But the Clinton camp maintains that the lawmakers aren’t going to be able to find anything on the server.

Clinton’s lawyer informed a congressional committee Friday that there are no copies of any of the emails the former secretary of state sent from her private email account while at the State Department. That’s because once the former top diplomat sorted out “government-related” emails, all others deleted automatically after 60 days.

“Thus, there are no hdr22@clintonemail.com emails from Secretary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state on the server for any review, even if such review were appropriate or legally authorized,” Clinton lawyer David Kendall said in a letter to the lawmakers.

Kendall further told lawmakers that Clinton couldn’t even turn over emails that she had determined to be “official” without permission from the State Department.

“Secretary Clinton is not in a position to produce any of those emails to the committee in response to the subpoena without approval from the State Department, which could come only following a review process,” he wrote.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who heads up the committee investigating the Benghazi attack, said that Kendall’s response to the congressional request only makes Clinton appear more culpable in a cover-up attempt.

“We learned today, from her attorney, Secretary Clinton unilaterally decided to wipe her server clean and permanently delete all emails from her personal server,” Gowdy said Friday.

While it isn’t clear when Clinton decided to delete her emails, Gowdy added, “it appears she made the decision after Oct. 28, 2014, when the Department of State for the first time asked the secretary to return her public record to the department.”

Gowdy and his colleagues are currently considering “next steps” to investigate Clinton’s “unprecedented email arrangement with herself and her decision nearly two years after she left office to permanently delete” emails.

As the congressional investigation into Clinton’s email habits continues, it’s certain that Republicans looking ahead to 2016 won’t let the scandal be forgotten.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus joined Fox News Monday where he opined that the former top diplomat’s actions were likely “criminal in nature.”

“I mean this is intentional behavior, which in many cases, Steve, is criminal in nature,” Priebus said, noting that Clinton began deleting emails as the Benghazi investigation heated up. “I mean, you cannot just destroy documents when an agency is telling you to turn them over.”

In an earlier statement, the RNC chair had said, “Even Nixon didn’t destroy the tapes.”

]]>Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s decision not to seek a sixth term appears to have emboldened critics to speculate on the strange circumstances surrounding the timing of the Nevada Democrat’s so-called “retirement.”

Reid, who once led the Nevada Gaming Commission, hasn’t been seen in public this year without sporting some remarkable, visually distracting concealment for an injury he sustained sometime around New Year’s, when he claimed to have been injured in an exercise mishap. Three months into 2015, Reid has thrown in the towel, announcing that he will not run again for the Senate.

Now we’re starting to see stories like this one at PJ Media, where Michael Walsh gets blunt about Reid’s past appearing, from a certain perspective, to catch up with him:

It’s pretty obvious from the photographs that somebody beat the bejesus out of the soon-to-be-former senator from Nevada. And yet the national media has uncritically swallowed the cover story that “exercise equipment” was to blame for the loss of sight in the former majority leader’s right eye. Baloney. As far as I can tell, the piece of equipment allegedly behind the beatdown of Sen. Pat Geary has not been identified, but I can tell you from experience if the senator was using, say, a Soloflex machine this would be impossible: the weight straps simply come apart without any snapping or ricochet.

Back in January, the Powerline blog had intrepidly posited a similar conjecture. At the time, few others were willing to join in.

Fast forward to the present, where Reid appears greatly weakened — both physically and politically. Every conservative website seems to have a unique take in exacting, at this moment, its pound of flesh. You know it’s become a trend when progressive media redirects all the conspiracy theorists with an explainer.

On Monday, Judicial Watch entered the arena, offering a career overview of all the reason why Reid might be getting out while he still has eyes to see.

“You’d never know it from the mainstream media puff pieces of Harry Reid’s sudden retirement, but it was a long string of corruption scandals — including a recent one involving his attorney son — that drove the veteran Nevada senator to abruptly leave public office,” Judicial Watch opined:

For nearly a decade Judicial Watch has investigated and exposed Reid’s involvement in a multitude of transgressions and JW even warned the Senate Ethics Committee, but not surprisingly, no action was ever taken. On multiple occasions the Senate minority leader appeared on JW’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” list for his role in a number of political scandals that got more serious as his seniority and clout in Congress increased.

… As far back as 2006 Reid was in hot water for violating Senate rules by concealing a seven-figure payoff on a suspicious land deal orchestrated by a longtime friend known for political bribery and mob ties.

… In 2012 Reid made JW’s corrupt politician list because he was embroiled in an influence-peddling scandal involving a Chinese “green energy” client of a Nevada law firm run by his son Rory.

… In 2013 Reid was again named to JW’s most corrupt politician list for taking more than $130,000 in illegal campaign funds from a shady donor, Harvey Whittemore, who eventually went to jail.

… More recently Reid abused his authority to pressure the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to expedite a $115 million foreign investor visa deal critical to his son’s casino client.

Here’s a little backstory on the Rory Reid scandal, which was first reported by Nevada blogger Jon Ralston.

While none of this leads back to a definite motive, JW is strongly suggesting that it all adds up to one. That’s an entertaining bit of speculation, but Reid’s position and connections (both friendly and less so) may ensure he never publicly answers such a question.

Still, it’s hard not to accept the notion that, if there were indeed a fire, Reid’s announced “retirement” — more than a year before his seat comes open again — would be the best way to snuff it out.

]]>It’s not exactly Fast and Furious 2.0, but it’s still a sterling example of how incompetence, apathy and greed breed corruption in government. The Pentagon keeps losing track of explosives-detecting gear, and that gear keeps popping up for private sale on eBay.

The Intercept reported last week that the Department of Defense is in the process of attempting to track down “sensitive equipment” designed to detect roadside bombs, but the department’s uncertain how much of it has gone missing. What DOD has been able to find has turned up for sale on “the global market” through the Internet, including mainstream sites such as eBay and Craigslist.

The missing equipment includes thermal optic imaging and night vision devices that were supplied to U.S. forces to help locate improvised explosive devices, the leading killer of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, as well as related threats. “Since 2009, some of this advanced hardware has been reported as missing and is actively being sold or discussed on the global market on a variety of websites,” says an intelligence brief by the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service and its Multiple Threat Alert Center.

The report cites a leaked document from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), which highlights the equipment’s chain of custody through the Department of Defense until it turned up gone. Judging from the military’s report, there’s not a clear picture of how much of this stuff even remains in the DOD’s possession.

“In all, more than 32,000 pieces of equipment were issued,” the leaked report states. “Some kits are still in use, making it difficult to compile a precise inventory of what was issued and what might be missing. Items in the deployment kits are NOT for civilian use and are controlled under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) 22 CFR 120-130 and are Commerce Department List-controlled.”

The document further indicates that this has been occurring at least as far back as 2009. In addition to mainstream reseller sites like eBay, the gear has also appeared on sites that cater to more informed buyers: armslist.com, gunbroker.com, calguns.net, ar15.com and more. On those sites, the items “have been marketed as sporting goods, hunting equipment, bird-watching equipment and camping supplies.”

As TechDirt noted last week, some resellers appear to be under the impression that they obtained the gear through legitimate transactions they believe are covered under their federal firearms licenses (FFLs). If that’s the case, that suggests the gear could be changing hands more than once on its way to the open market — and that the buyers may be far better informed about what they’re buying (and why) than the sellers.

Or, as TechDirt put it:

So, the Department of Defense may do several things well, but ensuring sensitive/powerful military gear remains in its control — rather than in the hands of enemies or eBay users — isn’t one of them.”

]]>http://personalliberty.com/leaked-document-reveals-missing-military-gear-ended-sale-craigslist-ebay/feed/0There is nothing conservative about the Republican ‘War’ Partyhttp://personalliberty.com/there-is-nothing-conservative-about-the-republican-war-party/
http://personalliberty.com/there-is-nothing-conservative-about-the-republican-war-party/#commentsMon, 30 Mar 2015 05:01:35 +0000http://personalliberty.com/?p=278438Neocons have so corrupted the Republican Party that in order to be considered a viable presidential candidate, one must openly advocate for an open-ended continuation of the war on terror and a de facto war against Iran.

]]>Neocons have so corrupted the Republican Party that in order to be considered a viable national presidential candidate and to be embraced by the rank and file and Tea Party right, one must openly advocate for an open-ended continuation of the war on terror and a de facto war against Iran.

Of course, the Republican Party was born of corporatism and nurtured on bloodshed, so it’s no surprise that the masses, programmed as they are and conned into an unreasoning fear of U.S.-created Islamic booger bears, are eager to embrace a candidate who pledges unwavering support to Israel and who wants to continue slaughtering Middle Easterners armed, trained, funded and inspired by America and its allies — including Israel.

As historian Bruce Catton wrote in “The Civil War,” in 1860 Abraham Lincoln wanted to be the nominee of the new Republican Party — a party that consisted of an amalgam of former members of the defunct Whig Party, Free-soilers (those who believed all new territories should be slave-free), business leaders who wanted a central government that would protect industry and ordinary folk who wanted a homestead act that would provide free farms in the West.

Catton wrote: “The Republicans nominated Lincoln partly because he was considered less of an extremist than either (Senator William H.) Seward or (Salmon P.) Chase; he was moderate on the slavery question, and agreed that the Federal government lacked power to interfere with the peculiar institution in the states. The Republican platform, however, did represent a threat to Southern interests. It embodied the political and economic program of the North — upward revision of the tariff, free farms in the West, railroad subsidies, and all the rest.”

When seven lower-South states decided that Lincoln’s election ushered in what they believed would be a reign of unacceptable Republicanesque despotism, they terminated their relationship with the federal government, a relationship into which they had voluntarily joined and which politicians of the several New England states had for years rightly believed could be voluntarily terminated (and in fact that advocated for separation often, fearing what they considered a despotism of Southern agrarianism). When Lincoln proved himself duplicitous by going back on his word and sending a fleet to resupply federal troops at Fort Sumter, prompting the firing on those fleets by batteries from South Carolina, four upper-South states quickly followed suit.

From there Lincoln embarked on series of decidedly unconstitutional and unconservative steps, including conscripting men to fight his battles, raising taxes, printing greenbacks, sending federal troops to arrest state legislators, arresting contrarian editors and shutting down newspapers, and sending his army to invade the South in order to “preserve” the union.

The party promptly consolidated its power on the ruins and destruction of the South during the Northern War of Aggression and its aftermath. And destroying the South once wasn’t enough. Republicans were quickly advocating a second full-scale attack when Southern States declined to ratify the 14th Amendment — an amendment that has acquired such magical powers since its adoption (it was never constitutionally ratified) that it has granted federal judges the power to create and change state and federal law on their whim and invent all manner of “rights” once unimaginable. It is upon this amendment that the “right” of women to murder their babies, the “right” of gay people to be married and the “right” of corporations to contribute vast sums to purchase politicians are cobbled. It is upon this amendment that federal judges strike down state-passed referenda and force people to give up their right of religious conscious in order to placate homosexuals who want to purchase wedding cakes or wedding flowers or wedding photography services.

Thanks to Lincoln’s war and his Republican coterie, federalism is dead; and the nation, once a republican union of states, is now nothing more than a corporatist- and bankster-driven nation-state controlled by the District of Criminals and a handful of oligarchs.

This is certainly not the view of Lincoln to which most Republican voters — nay, most Americans — subscribe. To them, anything and everything Lincoln did — however evil or unconstitutional it might have been — was necessary and, therefore, acceptable to “save the union.”

Robert E. Lee recognized in the early days of reconstruction the danger inherit in the destruction of federalism and the federal government’s actions toward the South. Writing to Lord Acton in 1866, Lee said, “[T]he consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.”

And that’s exactly the path American government policy has followed since.

Conservative Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio, who fought the New Deal, labor unions and America’s entry into World War II, said: “[T]he principal purpose of the foreign policy of the United States is to maintain the liberty of our people. … Its purpose is not to reform the entire world or spread sweetness and light and economic prosperity to peoples who have lived and worked out their own salvation for centuries, according to their customs, and to the best of their abilities.”

Most Americans who consider themselves conservative have never heard of Russell Kirk. That’s a shame. He’s one of the great thinkers of the 20th century and considered the father of modern American conservativism. In his writings he created a number of principles of conservatism. One of them is: “In the affairs of nations, the American conservative feels that his country ought to set an example to the world, but ought not to try to remake the world in its image. It is a law of politics, as well as of biology, that every living thing loves above all else — even above its own life — its distinct identity, which sets it off from all other things. The conservative does not aspire to domination of the world, nor does he relish the prospect of a world reduced to a single pattern of government and civilization.”

Of course, that’s not the policy of the neocons, who see it as the duty of America to police the world and “spread democracy” even when the people it’s being spread to don’t want or need it. If the people decide they don’t want or need it, American government just deposes that regime and installs another… or not, as in the case of Libya, which has become a hellish cauldron of anarchy, bloodshed and terror for the poor inhabitants who enjoyed a prosperous and relatively free and safe existence before American drones and NATO bombs were unleashed in order to take out Moammar Gadhafi. The Republican rank and file embraces this policy of military adventurism, thanks to Bush the Second and his policy of “kill them over there so we don’t have to kill them here.”

And just who or what are necons? The original neocons were a small group of mostly Jewish liberal intellectuals who, in the 1960s and ’70s, grew disenchanted with what they saw as the American left’s social excesses and reluctance to spend adequately on defense. Many of these neocons worked in the 1970s for Democratic Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a staunch anti-communist. By the 1980s, most neocons had become Republicans, finding in President Ronald Reagan an avenue for their aggressive approach of confronting the Soviet Union with bold rhetoric and steep hikes in military spending. After the Soviet Union’s fall, the neocons decried what they saw as American complacency. In the 1990s, they warned of the dangers of reducing both America’s defense spending and its role in the world.

The trouble for rank and file conservatives who embrace this neocon foreign policy is one of cognitive dissonance. They are willing and eager to send their money and, worse, their sons and daughters and other people’s sons and daughters into foreign lands on behalf of Christians caught in the millennial-long civil war between Islamic thugs and being slaughtered by U.S.-backed ISIS criminals, to send their money and their sons and daughters and other people’s sons and daughters to back “rebels” seeking to overthrow regimes deemed unacceptable (Iraq, Libya, Syria and, if they get their wish, Iran) by the Council on Foreign Relations-controlled U.S. State Department and/or propaganda ministry, or to send their money and their sons and daughters and other people’s sons and daughters to back rebels (either overtly or covertly) in the U.S.-inspired Ukrainian coup, because they believe in “ freedom.” Yet they applaud Lincoln’s efforts to quash a secession (it wasn’t even a rebellion, as the Confederacy sought to live as a peaceful neighbor) that led to the death — directly and indirectly — of close to 1 million Americans because he preserved the Union.

When Bush the First launched the first grand Middle East excursion, Kirk said in a speech opposing the war:

Now indubitably Saddam Hussein is unrighteous, but so are nearly all the masters of the “emergent” African states (with the Ivory Coast as a rare exception), and so are the grim ideologues who rule China, and the hard men in the Kremlin, and a great many other public figures in various quarters of the world. Why, I fancy that there are some few unrighteous men, conceivably, in the domestic politics of the United States. Are we to saturation-bomb most of Africa and Asia into righteousness, freedom, and democracy? And, having accomplished that, however would we ensure persons yet more unrighteous might not rise up instead of the ogres we had swept away? Just that is what happened in the Congo, remember, three decades ago; and nowadays in Zaire, once called the Belgian Congo, we zealously uphold with American funds the dictator Mobutu, more blood-stained than Saddam. And have we forgotten Castro in Cuba?

And what would be the outcome of Bush’s war? Kirk predicted:

We must expect to suffer during a very long period of widespread hostility toward the United States — even, or perhaps especially, from the people of certain states that America bribed or bullied into combining against Iraq. In Egypt, in Syria, in Pakistan, in Algeria, in Morocco, in all of the world of Islam, the masses now regard the United States as their arrogant adversary; while the Soviet Union, by virtue of its endeavors to mediate the quarrel in its later stages, may pose again as the friend of Moslem lands. Nor is this all: for now, in every continent, the United States is resented increasingly as the last and most formidable of imperial systems.

Bush the Second and his regime assured us that we would be made safer by “fighting them over there.” But 14 years later, and were still being told there’s a radical Muslim somewhere nearby seeking to cause us harm. So whose prediction turned out right: Kirk’s or Bush’s?

No nation ever engages in foreign wars without at the same time initiating subtle and silent war on its own people. The war on terror has given us trillions of dollars in debt, reduced liberty, increased government spying and created a government even more hostile to its own people.

Finally, conservatives — true conservatives — are about small government. There is nothing conservative about a war party because wars are predicated on big government and fiat money, especially multiple wars on multiple continents. Yet a war party is apparently what Republicans have become because all of the presumptive candidates for the party’s next presidential election back an interventionist, wartime foreign policy… and that seems to be exactly what “conservatives” want.

]]>http://personalliberty.com/there-is-nothing-conservative-about-the-republican-war-party/feed/0Where is the information?http://personalliberty.com/where-is-the-information/
http://personalliberty.com/where-is-the-information/#commentsMon, 30 Mar 2015 05:01:17 +0000http://personalliberty.com/?p=278448A reader asks for some further insight into the formative history of the IRS — especially as it pertains to the ratification of the constitutional amendment that supposedly gives it the power to tax.

In this article the writer states that after the IRS was formed in 1913 that the 16th Amendment was never properly ratified. Can you please tell me where I can find this information because the 16th Amendment says that it was ratified February 3, 1913?

I would really appreciate any information you might have.

K.G. Sensenig

Dear K.G.,

This information is readily available. Bill Benson and M J “Red” Beckman wrote an excellent book on the subject. A short article on the key points by Benson can be read here. Here’s an interview with Beckman on the Alex Jones show.

]]>http://personalliberty.com/where-is-the-information/feed/0If I started prepping all over againhttp://personalliberty.com/if-i-started-prepping-all-over-again/
http://personalliberty.com/if-i-started-prepping-all-over-again/#commentsMon, 30 Mar 2015 05:01:15 +0000http://personalliberty.com/?p=278443I thought it might be interesting to take an introspective look at how my preparedness efforts have been and, if I were to start over again, what I would do the same and what I might do differently.

]]>I thought it might be interesting to take an introspective look at how my preparedness efforts have been and, if I were to start over again, what I would do the same and what I might do differently. It is interesting to look back and see some of the decisions that I have made, both with preparedness and life in general. Had I looked into things a little more, it would have definitely made a difference. My hope is that by sharing my reflections on my own preparedness efforts, it might help you with yours.

As a child/teenager, I got interested in camping and wilderness survival. This led to continuous treks into the woods and down to the river to hone my survival skills, shoot BB guns and catch fish. I even managed to catch myself with a hook right through the hand once! My recommendation is that you definitely avoid hooking yourself if you are going to go fishing. This interest in the outdoors and survival definitely served as a primer for my interest in prepping that would surface in adulthood.

Not everything has always been sunshine and roses. When I got into prepping as an adult, I fell prey to what I will call “Survival Fantasy Fog.” My definition of Survival Fantasy Fog is getting so wrapped up in the fantasy of the scenarios that occur in the survival fiction books that I read that these scenarios became a driving force in how I prepared. I don’t mention this to say that these scenarios could not happen; I just failed to objectively look at the likelihood of them actually happening. Given the chance to start prepping from the beginning again, I would certainly take a different approach.

Start with a plan

My start to prepping really began with just buying some random items that I thought I should have. While they were all items that did have a purpose in preparedness, there was not necessarily a rhyme or reason for how I was putting these items together. Instead of obscurely piecing together the components that would assist in my family’s survival, I should have started with a plan.

As I put together my preparedness plan, I should have looked at where I spend most of my time and the most probable threats that I face there. Along with where I am and what happens there, I should have looked at who would be with me, any special considerations with transportation, ways that I would get out of a scenario and what I would need, rally points, decision-making criteria, etc.

Only you can determine what the best plan is for you and your loved ones. There are many potential resources online that could be used as a standalone solution, or you could take bits and pieces of several plans to customize a plan that works for you. I took the components of several plans that I looked at and a few that I came up with on my own to make the plan that seemed best for me.

Water

I did not think enough about water when I first started out. I just took for granted the fact that water would always be there. After all, even if the power goes out, the power still works. While this is true in most cases, there are always exceptions to the norm. One scenario my family and I once faced was an imminent threat from flooding that seemed like it would most certainly cause sewage to contaminate the drinking water source for our city. Luckily, that didn’t happen but it came really close.

If I were to start over today, I would secure safe drinking water by taking the following steps:

Get a good home water filter or at least one individual filter per person.

After completing these steps, I would look at getting food-grade barrels to store large quantities of water for the long term.

Food

Food is a relatively easy area because we all know what we like to eat, but it seems to become more challenging when we are talking about survival food. This is often because of that survival fog I mentioned earlier. When we read about or see ads for survival foods, it almost becomes inevitable that we think about dehydrated or freeze-dried foods. It is almost like we can’t survive a disaster with the food we eat every other day of our lives.

Starting over, I would not worry about anything dehydrated or freeze-dried. This is a great area to expand into once a few months of everyday foods have been stockpiled. To get started, I would establish a two-week menu that consisted of only canned goods and packaged foods that store well for at least 12 months. Of course, ensure that your menu includes an appropriate number of calories to provide fuel for your body. Once I had my menu in place, I would focus on buying all of the items for my two-week menu. Once I did that, I would add two more weeks as it fits into my goal timeline. If two weeks is too much to do at once, add one day of food at a time.

Shelter

This is not an area that requires too much work if you have a place to call home already. But depending on where you live, there may be some steps required to be ready in the event that climate-control systems go out or if you are forced to leave. Starting over, I would ensure that I had plenty of blankets and an indoor-safe propane heater (along with enough propane to run it for a while). I would also ensure that I had a tent large enough for my entire family and a sleeping bag for each person in the event I had to go.

Security

I was already a gun owner when I started prepping as an adult. With a couple of guns in the inventory, I should have put more emphasis on ensuring that all of my guns served as many purposes as possible and that I had a good stock of ammunition for each gun. It is important to also consider non-lethal options. I would have purchased pepper spray and a collapsible baton early on if I could do it all over again. I would have also looked at low-tech security solutions like doorknob security sensors.

Bug out bag

My early days of prepping did not yield much concern for having a bug out bag. I did not realize, or maybe just respect, the number of things that could happen that would make a bug out bag the best immediate solution. Going back to the beginning, as soon as my foundation preparations for the house were in place, I would immediately put together a bug out bag. Once I had one bug out bag together, I would put together one additional bag for each family member, as I am able to. Don’t forget to tailor each bag to the family member to whom it will belong.

Medical

This is one of the few areas with preparedness that when I first started out, I had a pretty good grasp on what I needed to do, especially trauma medicine. The single greatest area that I could have worked on earlier is some of the non-trauma areas of medicine like over-the-counter medications for routine illnesses. I would also have made sure to have more knowledge and equipment to ensure proper sanitation in a collapse scenario. Sanitation problems account for tens of thousands of deaths across the globe every year, having the tools to provide safe and sanitary conditions is a vital function for a prepper. Also, don’t forget any special considerations for family members with special or chronic medical conditions that require prescription medications, medical equipment or special accommodations.

Car kit

Even if it is as simple as running out of gas or getting a flat tire, having a kit for your car is something that should not be overlooked. I started by keeping only a blanket and some extra water in my car. This is not enough. I would have started with a plastic tote and made sure that I at least had:

Blanket

Water

Snacks

Basic set of tools

Tarp

Flashlight

Small gas can or jug of emergency fuel

Jumper cables

Folding shovel

Toilet paper

Road flares

Small first-aid kit

Emergency air compressor

Fixed-blade knife, parang or machete

These items do not have to cost a lot of money but will go a long way in ensuring your security, safety and survival in plenty of everyday scenarios. As an example, once I finally put my kit together, I have used my emergency air compressor many times to re-inflate a leaky tire to allow myself the opportunity to get to a repair shop or at least somewhere safer than the side of the interstate highway to change a tire.

Office kit

I never gave much consideration to having any type of survival kit for work or at the office. This always just seemed like a crazy idea to me. If I have my bug out bag in the car along with a separate kit for the car itself, why would I need something more for the office?

As it turns out, you never know what circumstances you may find yourself in on a particular day. What if your car is in the shop and you don’t have access to your car kit or bug out bag? What if you work in a multiple-story building that loses power and the emergency lights don’t come on? What would you do if there were an active shooter incident in your office? These are three of the numerous and mostly unpredictable scenarios (or those we choose not to think about) that reinforce the idea of an office preparedness kit.

Some of the things that I have included in my office preparedness kit are a flashlight, space blanket, 1-liter bottle of water, tourniquet, trauma dressing, work gloves, bandana or dust mask, whistle, battery-operated radio with batteries, multi-tool, and a small bag of snacks (nuts, granola bars, jerky, etc.).

Barter

As I built the layers of my preparedness plan, I started to think that it would be a good idea to have some items on hand that could be used for barter. This is another one of those areas that came about in the midst of my Survival Fiction Fog. It is not that having items that could be bartered with is a bad idea. It is more the fact that barter items should be toward the tail end of your preparedness plan. Only once you have everything in place for you and your loved ones does it become practical to look at items that you could barter with others in the event of a collapse or disaster. If I started over today, I would not worry about barter until far along into my efforts.

While there are many approaches that could be taken to prepping, I think two of the things that any approach should share in common with the rest are planning and balance. If you have a good plan and benchmarks or goals that coincide, then you will be off to a good start. Tying balance in with your plan means achieving equal progress in each of the areas of preparedness like those listed above over marked periods of time. These time periods will likely coincide with the benchmarks or goals you set. When this plan is joined together with balance, you will have a strong start to getting prepared for almost any disaster.